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Jasper took a brown hand that had the feel of iron. The man's face, on a level with Jasper's, was very brown and lean. It had a worn look, a trifle desperate, perhaps, in the lines of lip and the expression of the smoke-colored eyes. Jasper, sensitive to undercurrents, became aware that he stood in some fashion for a forlorn hope in the life of this Pierre.
All about him, then, Hollister perceived strong undercurrents of life flowing sometimes in the open, sometimes underground: Charlie Mills and Myra Bland touched by that universal passion which has brought happiness and pain, dizzy heights of ecstasy and deep abysses of despair to men and women since the beginning of time; Lawanne apparently succumbing to the same malady that touched Mills; Bland moving in the foreground, impassive, stolidly secure in the possession of this desired woman.
There came to him now the low, never-ceasing thunder of the undercurrents fighting their way down from the Arctic Ocean, broken now and then by a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife, through one of the frozen mountains.
When she came, she and Robert talked all day, so far as lectures allowed, and most of the night, after their own eager, improvident fashion; and she soon gathered with that solemn, half-tragic sense of change which besets a mother's heart at such a moment, that there were many new forces at work in her boy's mind, deep undercurrents of feeling, stirred in him by the Oxford influences, which must before long rise powerfully to the surface.
The counteraction of emotions and feelings between the lawyer and the client, the judge and the jury, the undercurrents that are constantly moving from one to another, make up the drama of the court. The characters are laid, the theme is selected, the actors are chosen, and it remains for the play to be prepared. Pleadings are the programs of the performance.
So far Lady Arpington judged rightly; Carinthia's tears, shed at the thought of her brother under the world's false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her husband's advocates. Unusual as they were, almost unknown, they were thunder-drops and shook her. All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid on undercurrents.
I told my mother that nothing would probably come of my priesthood. She listened to it with the passive calmness which had grown customary to her through continuous practice in forced resignation, but which did not hide from the subtle observer the undercurrents of very ordinary human passions and desires.
Intrigues and undercurrents were going on hard in Rome, and the issue of the conclave was impatiently awaited. No one could predict any result. The election of Cardinal Pecci, future Leo XIII, seemed satisfactory, at least in the beginning. My winter passed pleasantly enough; I began to feel more at home in my new quarters, and saw many interesting people of all kinds.
Langton's house, he might have passed through his divinity studies at Oxford as his brother had done before him, content to drift with the stream, ignorant of the undercurrents which were already disturbing its apparently tranquil surface, and ready in due course to be consecrated to his office, and to take some benefice if he could get it, and live and die as the average priest of those times did, without troubling himself over the vexed questions of papal encroachment and traffic in pardons and indulgences which were setting Germany in a flame.
Being expert swimmers, there was little cause for fear so long as the current passed clear of obstacles, and the men had little to do but keep a suitable position, for the force of the water bore them well on the surface. But the chief danger was from undercurrents and whirlpools, and as the boundaries of the river rapidly narrowed this risk became more serious every moment.
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